July 21, 2026, Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.

I attended the July 21, 2026, Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.

All commissioners were present.

The first agenda item was “Second Public Hearing to reduce the speed limit on Mimosa Beach Drive.”

There were two people at the meeting who were in favor of the speed limit reduction. Nobody was opposed to it.

Since this was the second meeting for the proposed change, the final meeting was scheduled for the Thursday meeting.

The second agenda item was “Second Public Hearing to add a yield sign at the intersection of Little Island Lane and Little Island Drive.”

One resident was present who supported the new sign. He was also the same person who attended the first meeting. Once again, nobody was opposed to the yield sign.

Just like with the first agenda item, the final meeting for this issue will be on the agenda for the Thursday meeting.

The third agenda item was “Discussion of HVAC system in Admin. Building.”

The Maintenance Supervisor explained that one of the two compressors for the Administration Building (the Courthouse) has failed and possibly contaminated the freon in the other compressor. The HVAC design is a ground source heating and cooling system. It is a proprietary design and only three of them were ever built so it has been impossible to find a replacement compressor. To make matters worse, only eight of the dozen or so ground wells are still functioning.

Commissioner Gohagan confirmed with County Auditor Laughlin that Camden County has already set aside $427,000 as a contingency for this repair.

Presiding Commissioner Skelton noted that the County Attorney had opined that any new heating and cooling system would have to comply with Camdenton building codes. Skelton stated that he would prefer that any new solution would be designed in accordance with a common industry standard. No more of this proprietary nonsense.

The commissioners discussed several companies that have offered to present HVAC solutions to them. The Maintenance Supervisor said that one general estimate he had received estimated a cost of $1 million per floor for the [three floor] building.

Nick Sherrell, a candidate for Presiding Commissioner, attended the meeting and since he is trained in HVAC matters, the Commission asked him what he thought about it? Sherrell said that the county had several different options to solve the problem and he was willing to take a look at the current condition of the HVAC to determine what was needed.

The final agenda item was “Discuss the county’s credits with CERF.”

It had been mentioned at a previous meeting by Presiding Commissioner Skelton that he was told Camden County had an $800,000 credit with CERF, one of the county’s pension plans.

The county’s Payroll Administrator explained the situation to the Commission. The payroll system has payroll account “buckets” that are used to pay the pass-through payroll bills for employee expenses such as insurance premiums and pension contributions. These payroll “buckets” are supposed to be empty after the pass-through payments are made. The employee had noticed that the bucket for CERF showed a credit of $843,000.

Camden County pays 4% into the CERF pension plan for each employee. If the employee leaves county service before they reach the 8 year vesting mark, CERF credits the total county contribution for that employee back to the county. CERF is the only pension plan that returns a credit to the county.

The County Treasurer said that she had checked with CERF that very morning and CERF told her that Camden County currently has approximately $30,000 in CERF credits. The County Treasurer and the County Auditor walked over and took a look at the Payroll records.

The commissioners were unanimous in their opinion that they did not think that the current accounting software that the county uses, BS&A, does a good job of tracking the county’s finances. It sounded like the software hasn’t been deducting the CERF credits from the pass-through bucket when the county uses the credits to pay CERF contribution costs.

More investigation is obviously needed to confirm this and figure out how to fix it.

And that was that.